1.3 Beginner tips
It is important to get a good start in Tycoon Online. Play your cards right, and you will have a head start on your competition. Also, the better start you get, the faster your company will increase in value. __TOC__ Do not waste your money When you have created an account and logged in, you will have an account balance of 7 500 iKr. Founding a company will cost you 5,000 iKr, which means you will only have 2 500 iKr left! This is not a lot. To build your first buildings, you might want to take up a loan with the bank. In the beginning, you can borrow a maximum of 5.000 iKr, but be warned; the money will have to be repaid so do not choose a loan you cannot handle. Another way to raise money is selling shares. Each company starts out with 50 shares. They are worth a total of 5 000 iKr. You can put some of them on the stock market and hope that someone takes an interest. If a share is bought, you will receive its value added to your savings, and the buyer will gain ownership of one of your shares. As your company grows, your shares will increase in value, and you will gain more money from them if you sell them at a later point. It is advised to keep at least some of them as their value grows quickly if you grow your business successfully. Choose your first buildings carefully Start out simple. Being new to the game, a safe option is to build a raw materials factory and produce goods such as oil, wood, wheat, etc. This allows you to get a feel of the mechanics of the game. If you start out building a factory that refines already produced goods, you will have to afford raw materials and be able to be online to look for them on the market. A big, expensive factory is a huge waste of money if it is not stocked with the goods it needs to produce its merchandise. After purchasing the building you choose to build, it is time for you to choose a location in the city to place it on. Start by checking what kind of ground the building needs to be built on. There are three types of ground: city, rural and offshore (water). Now, you need to buy the zones to build on. To do this, go to "Zones" in the left menu and choose the "buy zones"-option. This will take you to the city map. There, choose a sector, for instance, rural (light green) and buy the zones needed. Your first 10 zones are free. Now all you have to do is to wait till next tick (every tenth minute) for the zones to come in. After this, go to the building you bought and place it on the zones, and then place staff in the building and it will start being built. Employ the right staff When employing staff, you will notice that each person you can hire has been trained for a specific job. If this job matches the building you put the employee in, he or she will work very efficiently. For instance, an oil driller will do best working on an oil drill. However, this is not a requirement. A doctor would also be able to work on an oil drill. Having the right staff in the right buildings is nice - but the most important thing is to have your buildings fully manned, no matter what type of staff work in them. When employees work in your buildings, they will gradually improve their performance. Their attributes will rise over time. Highly skilled workers are the best to have in your shops and factories as these will produce more goods than poorly skilled workers. If you are running low on cash, keep an eye on the salary demands of the people you hire. Don't ever forget that you will need to pay salary! Once every week, you'll have to pay your staff, and make sure you know when this happens. Click "Staff" on your left hand menu, and then the "Salary" link, and you will find your salary information. The salaries that are paid your employees are taken from your salary account, so you have to make sure there is enough money on it when pay day comes. You can deposit money to your salary account on the "Salary" page. the screen shot above shows current dissatisfaction in red box. Measure to carry out list of which is on a drop down menu in green box and details of this option and its effect in blue box In the screen shot above you can see that total salary is made up of to sections wages and social fees, the more staff you employ the higher the % of social fees will be. (see red box out) The green box out shows how much money you have in your salary account number on the left and the number in brackets on right is amount surplus or needed to pay salaries as of right now. red means you need this amount added to cover current salary, black means this amount is surplus. The blue box is where you can choose when to pay your salaries and the yellow box shows last payment date next due date and last possible due date. To add more cash to your salary account click the link shown in the orange box If your salary account isn't full when it's time to pay salaries, the remainder will be taken from your savings, together with a charge of an extra 25%. Such an event also increases the dissatisfaction among your employees the following midnight, which increases the chance of your staff going absent from work. To make your staff happy, go to the "Absence prevention measures" page, which also is located in the "Staff" section and carry out an appropriate absence-prevention measure to lower dissatisfaction. The screen shot above shows a number of pieces of data red box is current dissatisfaction %. Green box is current selected measure from a drop down box. Blue box is a description of the current measure and its effects on dissatisfaction Produce the right goods To know what goods are the most profitable, it is important to keep an eye on the market prices. Good players are flexible and often change their production several times during a round to get the most out of their production. For more information see (see the "Calculation of market prices" help file). Make use of market bonuses When buying and selling goods on the market, you can earn special bonuses that refund part of what you spend or award additional company value. Find out how to do this on the "Market" help file. The screen shots above show how to view the bonuses on the right from left hand menu. Also the screen shot on the right looks at how to interpret the data. Red box chooses sales or purchase bonus this is the sales bonus. Blue box looks at a good with no bonuses as the good is bought in and sold in my shops the market bonus or sales bonus is for goods you produce and sell to the market as seen in the yellow box. If I had sold any of the wheat to the bank then there would be a number under the sales column and the bonus would equal less by this amount The screen shot above shows the amount of bonus available on that particular day This screen shot shows how much purchase bonus is still available Watch your warehouse capacity You start the game with a warehouse capacity of 500 units of goods. You can increase the capacity 500 units at a time by upgrading your warehouse. There is no maximum capacity for your warehouse, as long as you can afford the upgrades. If you hold more goods in your warehouse than warehouse space, you will be fined for every good that exceeds your limit. Screen shot below shows how to get to the warehouse section from menus on the left The screen shot above shows the information available to you from the warehouse page. The red box shows what level your warehouse would be if you were to do the next upgrade and how much that would cost. Yellow shows how much of the warehouse space you have utilised at this moment. The yellow and blue boxes are showing what I have in my ware house and what I have on the market. In this instance I have 1 unit of bread in my locked warehouse. I did this so whern I am looking to buy bread from the market the one will show and I can quickly see when bread is available on the market. Quicker you can see it better chance you have of buying it. Use the stock market carefully You get dividend from your stocks only once a week. It is in your best interest in each round to try and buy your maximum 5 shares each day starting on day 0. Money is tight at the start, but if you plan wisely you will enjoy the weekly dividend paid to you. It is to your advantage to continue buying your maximum amount of 5 shares each day the first week. Think of it as hiring 5 more staff, but instead of paying out a weekly salary, you get paid free money to be used towards building up your company. After the first dividend payment received (paid on Sundays @ 6:00am game time), you can then be a little more selective on your share purchases. Any amount of Free Money is a bonus in the early weeks of the round. Spend some time at the start of the round or even before and click on some of the players names. You will bring up their profiles and game history. See how they have done in past rounds and make yourself a list. Click on the records link on the right hand side of the main menu and see who holds records for highest dividends paid out in past rounds. Are they playing in the current round? Might be a good idea to try and purchase a share from them. Do not waste money on transportation too early Transportation does not increase your income much. Instead, they generate a lot of company value, which offers players who have built the maximum number of buildings, an excellent way of further increasing the company value they earn. Vehicles are best bought once you are satisfied with the buildings you own. Note that the price of vehicles increases depending on how many you own. Ask for help A lot of players log on to Tycoon Online every day. Many of these are active in the forums and in the http://www.tycoononline.nu/irc/tochat.htmlchat. If you are experiencing difficulties with playing the game, or have questions not answered in the help files or the FAQ, never hesitate to question the more experienced players. Among them, the forum moderators will be delighted to be of assistance. Please post only serious threads in the forum and treat other players with respect. Sexual and racial slurs as well as other harassment will not be tolerated. Be patient and never give up Tycoon Online is a long term game. While a good start means a lot in Tycoon Online, keep in mind that a round lasts 70 long days. You have plenty of time to devise your own business strategies and plot to make it to #1 at the end of the round! Tips